


Come Home

by Lollopy



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21889486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lollopy/pseuds/Lollopy
Summary: Just over a week after he breaks things off with Callum, Ben’s getting ready to deal with Keanu. He’s not having second thoughts. Honestly.‘He nearly goes through with it.Why shouldn’t he? What’s he got to lose? His mum’s worked out Ben’s up to something not good and made it clear she doesn’t want him living in her house. Lola’s suddenly got every school run covered, and Jay makes no secret of the fact he thinks Ben’s making several huge mistakes at once. For the first time, his dad is the only one who’s not looking at him like he’s a complete disappointment. He’s not going to throw that away.’
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> Friday’s episode was too sad for me not to immediately start on some kind of fix for it.
> 
> This was posted on Tumblr but seems to have vanished from the tags, so if it looks familiar that might be why.

He nearly goes through with it.

Why shouldn’t he? What’s he got to lose? His mum’s worked out Ben’s up to something _not good _and made it clear she doesn’t want him living in her house. Lola’s suddenly got every school run covered, and Jay makes no secret of the fact he thinks Ben’s making several huge mistakes at once. For the first time, his dad is the only one who’s not looking at him like he’s a complete disappointment. He’s not going to throw that away.

So that’s why he’s sat in a car that was meant to be scrapped, waiting for Keanu to leave the cafe he’d met Sharon in an hour ago. She’s already left. Phil’s dealing with her.

Ben knows exactly how it’s going to go, what he’s going to do. He knows how he’s going to casually bump into him, offer him a lift back home. He knows the detour he’s going to take, that wooded area he’s going to drive them to, the one where the trees are so thick you can’t see what passes for a starry sky in London. He knows what he’s going to make Keanu write in the goodbye letter to Louise, saying he’s leaving the country, sorry, forget about me. He knows the places he’s dumping the body, the gun, the clothes he’s wearing afterwards. He knows what he’s going to do when he goes back to what’s now his home, the casual way he’s going to say _it’s done_ as he sits down on the sofa, eyes fixed on the TV. And he knows the most he’s going to get from dad is a nod or a grunt or a _good _but that’s fine because that’s more than he’s got for most of his life and he’ll take that.

Another few minutes tick past and Ben takes the opportunity to turn his phone off and drop it in the cupholder. He opens the glove compartment, checks the envelope Phil gave him is still there. At the last second, he decides to throw his wallet in there too. He won’t be needing it, and the last thing he wants is for it to accidentally fall out of his pocket somewhere it shouldn’t.

He knows he’s torturing himself by using it. Every time he does he remembers the sad smile on Callum’s face as he’d handed over that gift bag, carrying the rucksack of spare shirts and other bits he’d left at the Beale’s during their short time together. “Can’t take it back,” he’d said. “But it seems a waste to chuck it.” He digs it out of his pocket and runs a thumb over the initials, remembering that picture on the inside.

And suddenly it’s like Callum’s in there car there with him. “Why is it ok for you to throw your life away to save him going to prison?” he can hear him say, as clear as if he was sat in the passenger seat. “What, just because Sharon had an affair?” He shakes his head like it’s going to stop the words going through his head, but it’s not his overactive imagination writing the script, it’s a memory of a very real conversation.

Two days ago Callum had cornered him in the car lot after he’d pieced together exactly what Ben had planned. He was smarter than people gave him credit for. He’d stood by the desk, blocking Ben from leaving, pleading with him even as Ben stared over his shoulder and tried to count the slats on the window blinds instead of listening.

“We’re done, remember? It don’t concern you. _I_ don’t concern you.”

“I’m not saying this for me! I’m saying this for Lexi, and your mum, and Lola, and Jay, and Pam, and everyone who’s going to lose you if you go through with this. I don’t want to see you throw everything away just for a pat on the head from your dad.” Callum had dug his fingers into his arms, then, to try and get his attention.

He closes his eyes, and remembers how (10 days ago, he can’t help counting) Callum’s hands on him had felt as he’d looked him dead in the eyes and said, “I am in love with you, Ben.”

I am in love with you, Ben.

In love.

With you.

_You_.

Him. With his dodgy hearing and sketchy past and all the disasters that happen around him.

What is he doing?

“You are a fucking idiot,” he tells himself in the rearview mirror. “What are you doing, you absolute-”

His cursing is cut off by movement over the road. Keanu, leaving the cafe. Right. This is it. He’s going to open the car door, walk over, _oh nothing, just picking up something for Mum, ordered it for Christmas but it came late, do you want a lift back?_ and then. Then. Then he’s going to… 

Keanu walks down the road, around a corner, and out of sight, probably towards the tube station a few roads down. He’ll be home in 20 minutes, sat down with a cup of tea and a biscuit within half an hour.

Ben doesn’t move.

He can feel the adrenaline in his fingertips, tingling up his arm, but nothing to do with his dad or Sharon or Keanu or the gun sitting in the glove compartment.

He fumbles with his phone, trying to hurry it back into life, and when he does pull up a new message to Callum his hands are shaking so much he has to write it out half a dozen times.

_You were right_, he types. _I didn’t do it. I won’t._

He drops the phone into his lap with a sigh, tipping his head back into the seat. It’s too late to salvage anything, and he doesn’t deserve to be able to, but he needs Callum to know.

He takes a minute or two to breathe and let himself calm down, get his heart beating at a normal speed. He doesn’t want to crash the car on the way back home. Ben takes another deep breath at the thought of going back. There’s no way to explain this to Phil. Maybe he should turn the car in the other direction, drive away and not-

The phone in his lap beeps with the standard text tone, uniform and ordinary like the message it’s alerting him to isn’t changing his life, _saving _his life.

_Callum:_

_Come home x_


End file.
